


and i will keep trying (forever, if i have to)

by constellationsofsentences



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constellationsofsentences/pseuds/constellationsofsentences
Summary: “Hermann,” the thing that is not Newton says.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43





	and i will keep trying (forever, if i have to)

**Author's Note:**

> BEAR IN MIND i took a few liberties with the plot details of uprising and that i have in fact only read the wikipedia plot summary because i simply do not have the energy to have my heart ripped apart that much. also i'm way late to the party on this but it's been eating away at my soul and i was having an emotional moment and this is what happened. enjoy lol

When Hermann wakes up, he’s warmer than he’s felt in years. Somehow, he knows something is different.

His room is exactly as it’s supposed to be. The same heavy grey comforter, the same pans heaped on the microwave Newton bought him for his birthday last year, the same shelf of notebooks set neatly against his carefully ordered wardrobe. He can see his parka hung carefully on the hook on his door, his cane leant against his bedside table where it always is.

He can feel the warm press of a body against his back. That’s different. Like all the rooms in the Shatterdome, he only has a twin, and his legs are curled around somebody’s cold feet. He presses against them. The soft familiarity of the situation shocks him; it’s new and yet his body welcomes the sensation like an old friend. He sighs, and the person behind him sighs in tandem. Hermann reaches a hand out behind him, feels for another hand to hold.

“Good morning,” he says, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. There’s the soft whirr of sheets as, with some difficulty given the total lack of space, he manoeuvres himself to face them.

Tattooed hands smooth across his waist, his back, his shoulders. Hermann smiles, presses his forehead into a tattooed chest.

“Morning."

Hermann recoils. It’s as if somebody has taken Newton’s voice and distorted it beyond recognition. It grates like nails on a chalkboard. He looks up.

It’s Newton’s face. What else would it be? But something in his cheekbones is wrong, too defined, and his hair is carefully combed and gelled even as they lie together in the early morning light. Hermann searches his eyes for some glimmer of familiarity. He finds none, just dull, empty nothingness. And as he watches, tendrils of blue begin to snake across the whites of the thing’s eyes, the green irises which had once looked at him with awe, with _love_ , until there’s nothing left but empty hatred. And finally, awfully, a sneer slithers its way onto Newton’s face, twisting his features into something scathing and unnatural.

“ _Hermann_ ,” the thing that is not Newton says, its tone lilting, poisonous.

Hermann pulls himself away so that he’s facing the floor, and vomits. When he turns back, the thing gone.

He lies in bed, shivering. The moment seems to stretch on for years, or maybe only a few seconds. He can’t tell. The sheets press down on him. He feels too hot and too cold, all at once, claustrophobic and so, so alone. There is nothing there except for the rush of a laugh around his ears.

* * *

He’s standing in a long corridor he doesn’t recognise, a great tube of glass with a platform of ugly yet familiar hotel carpet at either end. Hong Kong in all its glory lies beneath them, red and pink and green. Skyscrapers grow below them like neon flowers.

The thing that is not Newton laughs. There is no wind, but still, the greasy strands of his hair seem to move.

Hermann tightens his grip on his cane.

“You’re not Newton,” he says.

The thing laughs again. Hermann smells burning. The pervasive stench of sulphur permeates the air. Hermann resists the urge to gag.

“You’re not Newton,” he repeats.

The thing that is not Newton smiles. “Denial doesn’t suit you, Gottlieb.” It’s wearing Newt’s skinny-tie, its sleeves pushed up at the elbow, showing his tattoos. They seem to move, laughing viciously along with it. “Don’t lie. You always knew it would come to this. You knew I wasn’t strong enough. Wasn’t _good_ enough.”

Hermann sags. “Don’t _say_ that!”

“A Kaiju groupie through and through,” says the thing, tone vicious, edged with poison. “That’s what they called me. And they were right.”

The soft echo of screams sounds almost like a melody. Hermann barely notices at first, too focused on the dark, dark eyes of this puppet-Newt, the blue stains around them, around his lips, too. Hermann glances down. A kaiju plucks civilians like flowers from the streets, chucks them over its shoulder. The din increases, horror coursing through the air. Hermann can almost taste it; bitter and sharp like swallowing shampoo. The thing that is not Newton inhales it like Oxygen. Its form begins to flicker, to glitch like one of the characters in the shitty video games Newt loves. It straightens, suddenly armoured in a suit and tie, sunglasses masking those terrible eyes.

“They were _right._ This is me. This is _me._ ”

It shouts the last bit. Its words are spears that pierce Hermann from all sides. He can feel the temptation to fall in on himself. To let them overpower him, to multiply the Kaiju below by ten, by a thousand. To believe them.

Hermann Gottlieb is many things: a genius, a scientist, a disappointment. He likes his coffee black and his sweaters brown, and he likes maths because it’s the only thing that he’s ever found that’s always consistent. Newton Geisler is many things: a genius, a scientist, a nuisance, but he is not consistent. He doesn’t even _like_ coffee, though he pretends, and all his sweaters are ugly and brightly-coloured and he likes biology because he loves to surround himself with _life._

Hermann Gottlieb is many things, but he will not be a coward. “You’re not him. You’re just… Alice.”

The thing snorts. “Cute,” it says, spitting out the word like a weapon. “We’ll see.”

The aria of screams reaches its crescendo. Hermann stumbles, landing with a thud on the hideous carpet just as the chorus reaches its peak, so high it shatters the tube of glass joining Hermann and Alice together, Hermann and the thing that is not Newton but looks so, so much like him. Alice slicks its hair away from Newton’s face. It laughs, deep and booming and heavy. Hermann feels it like a weight on his chest.

* * *

Newton’s invited him to meet Alice again.

At the last moment, though, Hermann gets a text: _Alice unwell. Coffee instead?_ The lack of emojis is unlike him. Hermann has to sit a moment to assuage the concern.

It’s the third time Alice has cancelled on their plans. Hermann’s never even seen a picture of her, though the last time they’d seen each other six months ago Newton had broken out a very expensive-looking stash of champagne and gone on and on about her _mind_ and her _ideas_ and _just everything about her is amazing, Hermann, I really can’t wait for you to meet, we’re going to change everything, just you wait._

A pool of jealousy had boiled steadily in Hermann’s chest. He hadn’t drunk anything.

Now, though, he’s standing, overpriced coffee in hand, in the most formal coffee shop he’s ever seen. Not even his father could top this. The place is filled with men in suits standing around, stiff-backed because there isn’t a single chair in the entire establishment. Everything’s done up in red and black and the lights are too bright and Hermann’s leaning heavily on his cane and Newton doesn’t seem to notice. He’s wearing these ridiculous sunglasses, like he’s a rockstar, except their shared fifteen minutes of fame ended approximately a week after they cancelled the apocalypse.

“You should come work for Shao, really,” he says. “Not much money left in teaching.”

Hermann stares. His skin crawls. Newton doesn’t seem to notice. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed… Well, let’s just say you’re not rolling in it, are you, Hermann?”

Hermann stares some more. He really should sit down. Newton knows he’s not supposed to stand for so long, and the choice of a standing-room-only coffee shop seems pointed, deliberate. Who even thinks a coffee shop without chairs is a good idea? His arm is beginning to ache, and his leg… “That’s really none of your business,” he says stiffly.

“I was only saying you’d be more comfortable with us. I could even… I could use your help. It’s not like you’re doing much, anyway.”

Hermann wonders if Newton is being deliberately rude. He burns. “Excuse me, Newton, I have to go. I have an appointment.”

Newton barely reacts. Or maybe his reaction is hiding by those atrocious glasses. “See you soon,” Hermann murmurs.

* * *

“Even if I’m not him, you’re never getting him back.”

Hermann brushes aside the wiring they needed for the drift. Alice is leaning over him, the dead baby kaiju glowing blue and turning their surroundings almost hazy. Hermann breathes heavily. _This is not how this moment goes_ , he thinks. He can’t remember anything from the drift, even though he knows it was just seconds ago.

“This is it. _I’m_ it.”

“You’re not him,” Hermann says, again. He feels like he’s said it a thousand times, his voice hoarse and tired.

“Ah-ah,” murmurs Alice. “You forget we’ve drifted. I have all his memories. You might not think I’m your Newton, but I’ve _been_ him. I can be him again.” It makes a vague approximation of a seductive smile; on Newt’s face, it looks like it’s been pasted on by a child. In an attempt to stand, Hermann reaches for his cane, pulling himself up to sit against the machinery.

Alice’s voice, this scratchy, false version of Newt’s, says: “You always were his weakness.”

Fury surges through him, a tidal wave that sweeps over his body and through his eyes, his legs, his arms. Hermann drives his cane into Alice’s chest. It shouldn’t go in, and yet somehow it does, with a heavy squelching sound like Hermann has just stepped in mud.

Alice laughs around it, again, and again, and again, vicious and venomous and tinged with the smell of chemicals.

His cane comes away stained, Kaiju Blue.

* * *

“Don’t lie,” says Alice, spreading its arms out and gazing at Hermann. Except it’s not Hermann because Hermann is here watching himself be told something he already knows is not true. “You always knew it would come to this.”

Alice and this not-Hermann, this projection of Hermann, stand in the middle of an empty classroom. The desks have been pushed to the side. Ghosts of Newton’s childhood bullies linger in the corners of Hermann’s mind, but his attention is on the figure sitting in between the two projects, curled around a desk, head drooping. Staring limply at the projection of Hermann as it sags, just a little. Nods slightly.

“You knew I wasn’t strong enough. Wasn’t _good_ enough,” says Alice. The figure’s expression implores the projection to say something, anything. The dark frames of his glasses make his green eyes seem larger than is natural. _Newton._

“Yes,” says the projection. It echoes through the room, bouncing off the walls. Hermann recoils. Newton doesn’t notice, his attention wholly on this false Hermann. “I know, I know, he was never—he wasn’t…”

“A Kaiju groupie through and through. That’s what they called me. And they were right.”

“I _know!_ ” cries the other Hermann, and the world tips over as Newt collapses.

* * *

They’re sitting on a beach. It’s an English beach, so Hermann’s wearing a grey cable-knit sweater he bought in a charity shop in town, and Newton’s shoved the world’s ugliest hat on his head, but it’s one of those rare days where the sun is doing its best to at least keep the worst of the grey away.

“I’m sorry,” says Newton. His cheeks are pink with the cold. Hermann wants to kiss the red tip of his nose, to rub those shivering hands between his own until they’re warm. He’s wearing a terrible jumper: blue stripes with a menorah in the centre that lights up at random intervals. He’d tried to present Hermann with a matching one, had grumbled when he’d been vetoed until Hermann said he’d wear it at dinner.

“It isn’t your fault.”

“Fuck him, though. You’re – _just like him_.”

The mild December air turns sharp and vicious as Newton vanishes into Alice. The clouds pull together over the ever-hopeful sun.

“Bring him back,” says Hermann.

“Why?” asks the thing, its taunts so alien to Newt’s mannerisms it would be almost funny if it wasn’t so horrifying. “Because you love him?”

Hermann glares. “Would that be so bad?”

It stands. Hermann feels himself stand with it, without thought. “Shame. He loved you, too.”

Hermann tries to ignore the past tense. _Not true,_ he reminds himself. Newt is still here, still—

“Too bad you’re too much like your dear old dad. Pushing everyone away… your mother, your siblings, _me_ … You were too scared to tell Newton how you felt. And now look,” it laughs, again. “You’ve lost your chance.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Ah-ah. Yes, I do. You forget… seeing into Newton’s head… that means I’ve seen into yours, too. You are angry and vicious like him. You resent him for not _understanding you_. What’s the difference?”

“You’re trying to send me crazy.”

The thing shoots back a grin that is so much like Newton Hermann wants to hit it. “Is it working?”

Hermann wants to say _No,_ but he knows the thing will see right through the lie. He says nothing.

* * *

“Do you know why he was in love with you?” it asks. “We really can’t figure it out.”

Hermann stares are him. He’s sprawled on the ground, in the dark. He can’t see to find his cane, can only see the looming approximation of Newt’s face as Alice beams menacingly down at him.

“I mean, it would never work. Even on the simplest of terms: you can’t inhabit the same space. Look at your lab. How well did that work out?”

Hermann looks away. It’s true; they had to split their sides of the room with tape to keep themselves from a fight, and even then it barely worked. Insults were common, thrown around as if they were names. Hermann remembers one night spent poking holes in all the plastic cups in the water dispenser so every time Newton went to get a drink it would leak all over his trousers. Newton once rearranged all his stationery and Hermann got so angry they’d shouted throughout the day and well into the evening.

But there had been a camaraderie in it, towards the end. A joking lilt in the insults that meant they were never quite as harsh as they sounded to the passers-by. Newton had found the cup thing so funny he gone on about it to anyone who would listen for weeks. ( _Can you believe it? Pranked by Hermann_ _freaking_ _Gottlieb! Are you kidding?_ ) And at the end of the day, Newton had helped Hermann rearrange the stationery, once their clothes were dry and everyone else had gone to bed.

They _recovered_ , every time.

Hermann sits up, pushing away the weight pressing down on him.

“What are you doing?” asks Alice, grin thinning into something different, something almost _scared._

Hermann looks at it. Its impression of Newt would be convincing to someone who’d met him once or twice, maybe. But now he looks at it, and he can see the way it’s falling apart at the seams, the differences no longer terrifying.

“I’m taking him back,” Hermann says.

* * *

The beach is grey, and the rocks he’s sitting on are digging into the backs of his thighs, and he is not his father. Hermann says so, as forcefully as he can manage.

The thing raises its eyebrows. “Oh?”

“I am not my father. I love you, Newton. I will keep loving you and I will not abandon you and I will support anything you do.”

The laughs are long gone, now. It stares at him. “How do you think this will help?”

Hermann ignores it. “Come back to me, Newt.”

* * *

Newt heaves a heavy breath. Two, three, four. His hands are splayed on the desk.

Hermann places his own hands over them.

“It wasn’t real,” he says. “Breathe with me.”

He goes through it, in, out, in, out.

Newt stares but follows. When he’s recovered his breathing, he asks, quietly: “Hermann?”

“Yes. I’m here. That wasn’t me, but this is. I love you.”

* * *

They are drifting. Hermann can feel Newt within him, without. They stare at each other, trapped in orbit around each other. If he could, Hermann wouldn’t ever let go.

He concentrates on his faith, sends a beam of it across to him. Not blue, but green, forest-green, green with hope and truth and blooming with the future. Newt stares, wide-eyed and unbelieving. In the darkness, the leaves begin to flower. Hermann reaches for his partner’s hand.

Somewhere, the kaiju begin to scream.

* * *

“This isn’t you,” Hermann tells a Newt that isn’t Newt, as he leaves this coffee shop of horrors. “I know you. I love you. This isn’t you.”

Newt removes his sunglasses. Blinks at him. Hermann thinks he may be imagining it, but the blue in his eyes seems to have almost dimmed.

* * *

They are standing in a great, long corridor, only it is not so long as it was before. Alice flickers into Newt flickers into Alice again.

“You’re not _strong enough_ ,” it hisses, fury etched across Newt’s face. “You _can’t_.”

“Really?” asks Hermann.

Alice doubles over. It contorts into something Hermann can’t describe. The manifestation of terror and fury as Hermann had never quite managed to imagine. It screams – with rage? With fear? Hermann can’t tell. As quickly as it became, it is undone, and Hermann is left standing in the familiar hotel lobby with horrendous carpeting where everything began.

A banner above declares the event as some conference on Kaiju science. It’s only a few months after the first attack. Hermann has not yet developed the first Jaeger prototype. He is arrogant and furious and he has been learning how it feels to be told you don’t matter since he was five years old, has not yet learnt how to make his self his own.

Somebody taps him on the shoulder. “Um, Hermann, is that you?”

It’s Newt. Hermann smiles, feels his body say: “Dr Geiszler?”

“That’s me,” Newt chuckles, a little awkwardly. “Damn. I hadn’t expected you to be so…” He trails off. Hermann feels the faint sensation of past indignation.

“How dare you!” his mouth says.

His heart says: “You’re home.”

* * *

The last thing he said to Newt before everything went to shit was: “See you soon.” He can barely remember how long ago it was. Five, six years? Maybe even seven. The days without Newt have stumbled into one another, blurring into one unbearable nightmare that could have lasted for centuries, for all Hermann knew.

Newt breathes. Newt breathes and breathes, and his eyes are his own, and he’s looking at Hermann the way Hermann’s dreamed about for over a decade.

“Hey,” he croaks, and that’s _his_ voice, rusty with lack of use but still _his._

Hermann finally, finally sinks to the ground beside him.

Newt reaches a shaking hand, clumsily puts it to his face. Hermann’s hand is shaking, too, as he places it against the other. His breaths fall heavy and weighted to the ground between them.

“Hey,” Hermann whispers.

“They told me that I—that _they_ killed you.” His eyes, so green, so _perfectly_ green, are lined with bags, and there are tear tracks on his cheeks.

Hermann wipes them away. “They tried. I did not let them.”

“Fuck yeah. That’s my—that’s you. Practically fucking indestructible.”

Hermann lets loose one shaky breath after another, squeezing Newt’s hand as if it’s a lifeline. As if to let go would be to let Alice back in.

“Hey,” Newt whispers. The tear tracks Hermann just wiped away are renewed as he pushes himself up to rest on a forearm. “I’m here. I’m here.”

“Newton,” Hermann says. He doesn’t cry, not yet, not here, not while there are scientists and pilots and every person known to man craning to get a look. “My Newton.”

“I’ve told you fuckloads of times, Herms. Call me Newt.”

“Oh, be quiet, Newt,” Hermann says, no trace of irritation in his voice.

“Make me,” says Newt.

Hermann kisses him. To shut him up, of course. Not for any other reason.

* * *

Later, after Newt comes off the drift high, and undergoes a three-hour psych eval, and hours and hours of questioning, they lie pressed up against each other in Hermann’s tiny bed. The pots are where he left them above the microwave, his books on the shelf by his wardrobe, the soft grey comforter discarded on the floor.

Hermann rests his forehead against a tattooed chest. He sighs, wide and open and happy. Newt’s arms envelop him, a comforting weight at his side.

“I love you,” he says.

“I know.”

Hermann elbows him. Lightly, of course. “Be serious.”

“I am,” says Newt, leaning over to gaze at Hermann so intently he begins to blush in a way he hasn’t since he was 23 and busy being insulted both by a carpet and a well-intentioned man. “You wouldn’t have done that for me if you didn’t.”

Hermann leans up to kiss him. Their hands lace together. Newt’s fingers are warm as they wrap around Hermann’s.

“I love you, too,” Newt says, and bends down to kiss Hermann’s chest, his hip, the scar on his thigh.

“I know,” says Hermann, just to spite him.

**Author's Note:**

> why do all my fics end in a star wars reference i dont understanddddd
> 
> edit: this was updated as of 3 july 2020 because i realised it was bad and terrible! hope it's better now :)


End file.
